As progress on some measures in the Liberal-NDP confidence-and-supply agreement continue to play out publicly, the two parties have quietly been in talks to table electoral reform legislation before the next federal vote.
The Liberals have been net beneficiaries of FPTP in more election than all other parties put together since the 60s. They aren’t going to endanger that, ever.
Fuck off Trudeau, deliver on proportional representation or get the fuck out of the way.
Israel has a proportional representation system.
Minorities are often shut out from any decision making in a prop rep system.
See in a prop rep system the parties have all the power. Given the likelihood that no one party will get a majority, then a negotiation between parties are necessary. The deals made behind closed doors between parties is all that matters. If a minority group represents 2% of the vote, they likely wont matter in that negotiation. In fact a party representing minority interests can result in the need for the larger party to bring in for radical parties from the opposite end of the spectrum to form a coalition representing 50%+1 of the seats. Which results in the bizarre situation where increase support for a party representing minority interests ultimately results in worse conditions for that minority group.
This is how Israel’s proportional representation system played out.
Proportional representation systems only look good from the perspective of a spreadsheet. And maybe from an optics point of view, because the party controls the seats they can have people sitting in those seats that conform to how people want a parliament to look like from a diversity metric or whatever. But make no mistake, whoever sits on those seats is kind of irrelevant, the seats are owned by the party. Whoever sits in those seats have to vote for whatever polices were decided in the backroom deal to form the coalition.
From the perspective of power dynamics a prop rep system is actually super bad. Politics isn’t really as mathematical as putting numbers on a spreadsheet might indicate. Prop rep is a top-down party first dynamic.
A Community Representation system, which has a voter first bottom-up power dynamic is far better in my opinion.
Minority rights should be protected by a strong constitution, which is what is lacking in Israel.
The Netherlands also has proportional representation but with a strong constitution, and minority rights are perfectly protected.
This is not reform:
Specifically, the Liberals and New Democrats agreed to explore:
- Allowing an “expanded” three-day voting period during general elections;
- Allowing voters to cast their ballots at any polling place within their riding; and
- Improving the mail-in ballot process with both accessibility and maintaining integrity in mind.
I was so jealous when I found out they have SVT in Australia. We need something like that here. I hope they at least get to have a discussion about it during these talks.
Having a good voting system means a better democracy and more accountability placed on the politicians to represent the people. With FPTP, Trudeau doesn’t have to care as much if he fucks up and gets the left wingers to dislike him because he knows that they will vote for him anyway in order to prevent a conservative majority. With SVT for instance we will just vote Trudeau away when he does some bullshit in favour of an NDP government or other.
Increased accountability is especially important because we need those fuckers to address the climate crisis and a more democratic voting system would mean there would be real consequences for the politicans if they fail to do so.
Hasn’t made much difference in Australia. Much of the last 50 years has been a coalition between the right-wing Liberals and the right-wing, rural grievance, National party.
Along with different voting systems come different voting patterns. We could easily end up with coalition of the CPC , Bloc, and similar regional grievance parties.
Some people seem to think that a change to a proportional system would shut out the CPC. There is absolutely no guarantee that that would be the case.
Likud in Israel has little popular support, something like 30% in the last election, but they managed to cobble together an assortment of extremist parties to gain power. It’s not much different in Italy, Hungary, Türkiye etc, where various fascist parties have gained and maintain control.
Just to be clear, I’m not oppose to change. I’m pointing out that while the voting system is important, having an engaged and educated voter is importanter.
The point is that a proportional voting system would be more democratic overall. There would still be a right and left wing split but it would allow for many more parties with differing perspectives to exist within it.
Coalitions are always a possibility but I’d rather have two left and right wing coalitions made up of 5+ parties than a two party system as coalitions are less likely to be as unified. Also more diversity probably reduces corruption and regional grassroots movements may have an easier path towards attaining political power.
And like you said, such a change wouldn’t prevent fascism from taking hold either. Fascism never respects democracy and as such it cannot be dealt with by changing our voting systems. Rather, I believe the best way to deal with it is to explicitely ban it by law, paradox of intolerance style. In other words, you shouldnt be able to vote for someone who doesn’t believe in voting or in democracy. Also education is very important in this matter like you said.
It would be fun to throw something random in there like term limits. I’d appreciate barring anyone who has been an MP for 20 years from running again.
